"It is generally believed that such changes in the stratosphere do not affect the troposphere, due to the difference in air density between the two" and "the influence from above (i.e., from the stratosphere) is generally neglected"

but the authors instead find this 'settled' 'consensus' belief to be incorrect and that changes in the stratosphere (some of which relate to solar activity) can have profound influences on the weather/climate of the troposphere via effects on cloud formation and deep convection.

The paper joins many others describing potential solar amplification mechanisms and illustrates the complexity of determining indirect but large-scale effects from tiny changes in solar activity on weather and climate.

K. Kodera1,2, B. M. Funatsu3,4, C. Claud4, and N. Eguchi51Solar-Terrestrial Environment Laboratory, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan2Climate and Ecosystems Dynamics Division, Mie University, Tsu, Japan3LETG-Rennes COSTEL, Université Rennes 2, Rennes, France4Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France5Research Institute for Applied Mechanics, Kyushu University, Kasuga, JapanAbstract. This paper investigates the role of deep convection and overshooting convective clouds in stratosphere–troposphere dynamical coupling in the tropics during two large major stratospheric sudden warming events in January 2009 and January 2010. During both events, convective activity and precipitation increased in the equatorial Southern Hemisphere as a result of a strengthening of the Brewer–Dobson circulation induced by enhanced stratospheric planetary wave activity. Correlation coefficients between variables related to the convective activity and the vertical velocity were calculated to identify the processes connecting stratospheric variability to the troposphere. Convective overshooting clouds showed a direct relationship to lower stratospheric upwelling at around 70–50 hPa. As the tropospheric circulation change lags behind that of the stratosphere, outgoing longwave radiation shows almost no simultaneous correlation with the stratospheric upwelling. This result suggests that the stratospheric circulation change first penetrates into the troposphere through the modulation of deep convective activity.

I don't swallow the entire thinking:1- Whether hot oceanic surface temperature provides excess troposphere heat, OK.2- Whether this hot wet bubble pops up towards upper troposphere limit, still remaining warmer than ordinary air there, OK: this is so far nothing else than to make latent heat (from water vapour) free as pressure declines.3- Whether the heated stratosphere occurs, OK, this is consequence of former item.4 -But whether the upper warmer stratospheric bubble "falls in troposphere and warms it" NO WAY, because it is against basic laws of Physics: In same pressure conditions, warmer dry air cannot sink into a colder almost dry air !!!!!!!!!! It is as if a bottle cork would sink down to sea floor..!Thence, what occurs with this warmer stratospheric air? I am not a climatologist at all, so I let specialists to answer. I "feel" that this warm air creates an inversion layer above troposhere up it cools down by ozone irradiance. Thus the entire phenomenum would be a further cooling process, alike a thermostat, not a positive feed-back. This is only a personnal and non validated idea....